From: M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 06:10:07 +0000 (-0800) Subject: memoir: Valinor before and after COVID X-Git-Url: http://534655.efjtl6rk.asia/source?a=commitdiff_plain;h=fc347649eab3699f6786984993dcd3b4dfa3e6f1;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git memoir: Valinor before and after COVID If I'm willing to give adults pseudonyms for political cover, then the final version probably shouldn't use children's names at all—maybe not even for their sake (as I do the moral accounting), but to look less creepy to third-party readers. But we can cover that in a future edit pass after privacy negotiations. --- diff --git a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md index 9563602..7f0f575 100644 --- a/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md +++ b/content/drafts/if-clarity-seems-like-death-to-them.md @@ -222,7 +222,7 @@ I was _furious_ when "Against Lie Inflation" came out. (Furious at what I percei ----- -While visiting Valinor on 7 August 2019, the older son (age 2¾ years) asked me, "Why are you a boy?" +While visiting Valinor on 7 August 2019, Merlin Blume (age 2¾ years) asked me, "Why are you a boy?" After a long pause, I said, "Yes," as if I had misheard the question as "Are you a boy?" I think it was a motivated mishearing: it was only after I answered that I consciously realized that's not what the kid asked. @@ -446,6 +446,16 @@ Secret posse member reassured me that finishing the memoir privately would be cl (It does not, actually, have a happy ending where everyone comes to their senses.) +------ + +While visiting Valinor on 4 February 2020, I remember my nose dripping while I was holding Koios, the baby. Alicorn offered me a tissue. I asked if I shouldn't be holding the baby while my nose was dripping. She said it was fine. On the topic of possible sickness, I said that I hoped the novel coronavirus people were talking about didn't go pandemic. + +It did. The Berkeley rats took social distancing guidelines very seriously, so it would be a while before I could visit again. + +------ + +[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/] + ------- There's another extremely important part of the story that _would_ fit around here chronologically, but I again find myself constrained by privacy norms: everyone's common sense of decency (this time, even including my own) screams that it's not my story to tell. @@ -486,12 +496,6 @@ Given that I spent so many hours on this little research/writing project in May ----- -[TODO: pandemic starts] - -[TODO: "Autogenderphilia Is Common" https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/10/autogenderphilia-is-common-and-not-especially-related-to-transgender/] - ------ - On 1 June 2020, I received a Twitter DM from _New York Times_ reporter Cade Metz, who said he was "exploring a story about the intersection of the rationality community and Silicon Valley". I sent him an email saying that I would be happy to talk, but that I'd actually been pretty disappointed with the community lately: I was worried that the social pressures of trying to _be_ a "community" and protect the group's status (_e.g._, from _New York Times_ reporters who might portray us in an unflattering light??) incentivize people to compromise on the ideals of _systematically correct reasoning_ that made the community valuable in the first place. He never got back to me. Three weeks later, all existing _Slate Star Codex_ posts were taken down. diff --git a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md index d2202e1..d51bdb2 100644 --- a/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md +++ b/content/drafts/standing-under-the-same-sky.md @@ -174,6 +174,22 @@ But if he's _then_ going to take a shit on c3 of my chessboard (["important thin ----- +I got my COVID-19 vaccine (the one-shot Johnson & Johnson) on 3 April 2021, so I was able to visit Valinor again on 17 April, for the first time in fourteen months. + +I had previously dropped by in January to deliver two new board books I had made, _Koios Blume Is Preternaturally Photogenic_ and _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_, but that had been a socially-distanced book delivery, not a "visit". + +The copy of _Amelia Davis Ford and the Great Plague_ that I sent to my sister in Cambridge differed slightly from the one I brought to Valinor. There was an "Other books by the author" list on the back cover with the titles of my earlier board books. In the Cambridge edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were printed in full: _Merlin Blume and the Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _Merlin Blume and the Steerswoman's Oath_, _Merlin Blume and the Sibling Rivalry_. Whereas in _Preternaturally Photogenic_ and the Valinor edition of _Great Plague_, the previous titles were abbreviated: _The Methods of Pre-Rationality_, _The Steerswoman's Oath_, _The Sibling Rivalry_. + +The visit on the seventeenth went fine. I hung out, talked, played with the kids. I had made a double-dog promise to be on my best no-politics-and-religion-at-the-dinner-table behavior. + +At dinner, there was a moment when Koios bit into a lemon and made a funny face, to which a bunch of the grown-ups said "Awww!" A few moments later, he went for the lemon again. Alicorn speculated that Koios had noticed that the grown-ups found it cute the first time, and the grown-ups were chastened. "Aww, baby, we love you even if you don't bite the lemon." + +It was very striking to me how, in the case of the baby biting a lemon, Alicorn _immediately_ formulated the hypothesis that what-the-grownups-thought-was-cute was affecting the baby's behavior, and everyone _immediately just got it_. I was tempted to say something caustic about how no one seemed to think a similar mechanism could have accounted for some of the older child's verbal behavior the previous year, but I kept silent; that was clearly outside the pervue of my double-dog promise. + +There was another moment when Mike made a remark about how weekends are socially constructed. I had a lot of genuinely on-topic cached witty philosophy banter about [how the social construction of concepts works](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edEXi4SpkXfvaX42j/schelling-categories-and-simple-membership-tests), that would have been completely innocuous if anyone _else_ had said it, but I kept silent because I wasn't sure if it was within my double-dog margin of error if _I_ said it. + +----- + In June 2021, MIRI Executive Director Nate Soares [wrote a Twitter thread aruging that](https://twitter.com/So8res/status/1401670792409014273) "[t]he definitional gynmastics required to believe that dolphins aren't fish are staggering", which [Yudkowsky retweeted](https://archive.is/Ecsca).[^not-endorsements] [^not-endorsements]: In general, retweets are not necessarily endorsements—sometimes people just want to draw attention to some content without further comment or implied approval—but I was inclined to read this instance as implying approval, partially because this doesn't seem like the kind of thing someone would retweet for attention-without-approval, and partially because of the working relationship between Soares and Yudkowsky. diff --git a/notes/memoir-sections.md b/notes/memoir-sections.md index cd4c0d1..83d91b0 100644 --- a/notes/memoir-sections.md +++ b/notes/memoir-sections.md @@ -1,8 +1,9 @@ marked TODO blocks— ✓ Boston [pt. 6] ✓ Jessica's experience at MIRI and CfAR [pt. 6] -_ last email and not bothering him [pt. 6] +✓ pandemic starts [pt. 4] _ autogenderphilia (in-line section) [pt. 4] +_ last email and not bothering him [pt. 6] _ New York [pt. 6] _ reaction to Ziz [pt. 4] _ "Unnatural Categories Are Optimized for Deception" [pt. 4] @@ -21,7 +22,6 @@ _ culture off the rails; my warning points to Vaniver [pt. 4] _ December 2019 winter blogging vacation [pt. 4] _ plan to reach out to Rick [pt. 4] _ complicity and friendship [pt. 4] -_ pandemic starts [pt. 4] _ out of patience email [pt. 4] _ the hill he wants to die on [pt. 6] _ recap of crimes, cont'd [pt. 6] @@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ _ the story of my Feb./Apr. 2017 recent madness [pt. 2] it was actually "wander onto the AGI mailing list wanting to build a really big semantic net" (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9HGR5qatMGoz4GhKj/above-average-ai-scientists) With internet available— +_ what does "pervue" mean _ archive.is https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/1425334398484983813 _ group yelling operation quotes _ "Vassarite" @@ -88,6 +89,9 @@ _ Anna's claim that Scott was a target specifically because he was good, my coun _ Yudkowsky's LW moderation policy far editing tier— +_ explain Amelia Davis Ford ref +_ fold in observations from "trapped priors—at home" +_ earlier reference the children's books?! "And the Methods of Pre-Rationality" _ "Do not ask for additional services" doxxable? revise? _ Yudkowsky's "Is someone trolling?" comment as counterevidence to narcissim _ "typographical attack surface" isn't clear